When Justice Crumbles
by Dixie Darlin
Summary: Past story, one shot. Rosco used to be a good cop, but something happened to change all that . . .


**A/N: Hello all! No, I haven't quit on my other story (not gonna happen!), but I thought I'd write this one-shot about my favorite character and our favorite sheriff. This is my take on how Rosco went from good cop to bad cop. Hope y'all enjoy!

* * *

**

**When Justice Crumbles**

**Balladeer: A long time ago in Hazzard County, God still reigned from His kingdom in Heaven, the birds still flew among the trees, and Boss Hogg still owned just about everything he could get his little hands on. The only thing that was different then than now was that the Dukes still made moonshine and Rosco had his sanity.**

**Now everybody in Hazzard would have told you, if you were to pass through, that Sheriff Coltrane was one of the fairest sheriffs in Georgia. If you accidentally parked in the fire lane, he'd simply tell you to move your vehicle. If you sped over ten miles an hour, you just got a slight warnin'. Only if you drove fifteen to twenty miles over did you get a ticket. There were no speed traps, no scams to put away the Dukes, no corruption that went on past the office of Boss Hogg----but all that changed one day.**

Rosco was so upset when he got home that he didn't even bother to tell his sister, Lulu, "good evening" when he came inside. She had been living with him for years now, seeing how she was unmarried and jobless. As much as he loved his older sister, the whole deal with her living off his income was getting to be a burden, especially since he had over-due bills to pay sitting on the counter with dust growing on them day after day.

And now that problem was only going to get worse.

"I thought I heard you come in," Lulu remarked as she walked into the living room to where Rosco was sitting glumly on his couch, staring blankly into space. "Baby brother, what's the matter?" she asked, her usually cheery face having drooped into a frown. "You look like you did when you'd come home from school and that little Thompson boy had beat you up. Did somethin' happen at work?"

Rosco didn't have the heart to tell her the bad news just yet, and didn't want her to worry over his own problems, so he simply stated that it had just been a long day at the office and was tired. He didn't even seem interested in eating supper, although he knew that there was no telling when he might get another one.

* * *

**The Boar's Nest**

Rosco had left home to go to the Boar's Nest, hoping that a few shots of buttermilk might cheer him up. So far it hadn't. A partially emptied gallon of the stuff sat in front of him on the bar, the shotglass once again empty. He heard somebody say his name from behind him in a worried voice and he lifted up his blood-shot eyes and turned around in his chair to see who it was.

Jesse Duke.

"Rosco, what in the world—ya look miserable, what happened?"

The sheriff didn't object when the Duke patriarch sat down beside him to discuss anything that might have gone wrong that day. Rosco picked up his shotglass and looked at it with a blank stare, turning it in different directions as if studying its details. Then busted out laughing.

Jesse thought the man had lost his mind and gone delirious, which wasn't like Rosco at all. The uniformed officer got a hold of himself, though still chuckling, he replied to Jesse,

"What happened? What _happened_?" He sat the glass down on the bar with a _thump_. "You wanna know what happened to me, Jesse Duke? I got cheated, Jesse, cheated. That's what happened to me." He chuckled a little bit more before pouring himself another helping of buttermilk. He stared at the back wall before chugging down the glass's remains, then simply stated, "Cheated." Tears welled up in his eyes at that point and it appeared he was going to burst into crying.

"Rosco, snap out of it!" Jesse demanded gently, shaking the upset man's arm. "Who cheated ya? What are you babblin' about?"

Before he got an answer, Rosco started the silent crying routine and was shaking along with it. Tears fell and he covered his face with his hands, his elbows resting on the bar in front of him. Jesse didn't rightly know what to think of this, he'd always thought of Rosco as being rather put together.

The sheriff got a grip on himself and rubbed his hands through his hair. "Ya know that—that pension I was tryin' to get?" he asked in a soft voice.

"For being in the police service for twenty-some-odd years? Yeah, I heard you discussin' it time and again. What of it?"

Rosco was quiet for a minute before saying in another quiet voice, "I lost it."

Jesse's eyes widened a little. "Lost it? How'd you manage that?"

"I—I don't know," he said in a shaky voice, trying to calm his nerves. "I don't remember much about the conversation, but I was just told that I wouldn't be getting a pension." His voice started to break. "I was countin' on that to pay my bills, Jesse. I can't afford the house and my sister, too!"

"Well, well, well, and _well_!" a familiar voice rang out after having heard an earful of the men's conversation. J.D. Hogg (appropriately called "Boss") came strutting up to Rosco's other side in his signature white suit and sat promptly down beside him. "You seem to be havin' a bad day, Sheriff! Anything I can do to help?"

"Why don't you keep out of it, J.D.," Jesse said gruffly, knowing Boss would be up to no good. "Rosco's got enough problems without you gettin' tangled up in things."

Boss shrugged his shoulders. "Why, Jesse, I was only offerin' to help the poor man. You say you're havin' some money trouble?"

Rosco, his mind barely there, nodded his head. Boss gave a quick sinister smile before going on. "Now, Sheriff, if it's money you need, you should have come to me first thing! It's no problem at all." He hopped down off his barstool and took Rosco's arm. "Why don't we go to my office and arrange some details. Your problems'll be over in no time flat!"

The sheriff, who was barely paying any attention anymore, let the white-suited man lead him towards his office in the back of the Boar's Nest without any fight. He was so upset over his predicament, he probably didn't even know what he was doing or who he was with. Jesse stood up to intervene, knowing Boss had to have had _something_ up his sleeve, but Boss gave his peer a certain look that said to back off.

They were going down the hallway now, just the two of them, Boss leading Rosco like a little lost kid trying to get home. In a soothing voice, Boss was saying, "Now, Rosco—can I call you that—I understand that you are in quite a spot. I know about your pension and what happened to it. I know you have bills and I know you have to take care of your sister, Lulu. It sounds impossible, but I can take care of everything for you if you'll simply shake hands with me on a simple agreement."

They entered Boss's office, Rosco sitting down in a chair to rest while Boss continued to stand up and chatter away. He closed the door so they would be in private. "Rosco, you don't know this, but I've had an eye on your sister for sometime. She's a _lovely_ girl, that Lulu, and I know that she must be causin' you a lot of damage in your wallet. Am I right?"

Rosco thought about it for a second, then said, "She's my sister. I _have_ to take care of her."

"I know you do, but all the same she's breakin' your back with her needs when you have your own to deal with. Now, here's the deal." Boss dragged up a chair in front of Rosco and sat in it. "To start with, I will marry your sister. She'll be well-taken care of and loved the whole time she's with me. She'll never have to wait around for anything, she'll just have to ask. And _you_ will have a little extra dough in your pocket for yourself and them bills."

Rosco let it sink in what Boss was saying and nodded that he understood. Boss gave another quick grin before continuing.

**Balladeer: He looks like a fox that just found a secret entrance into a henhouse. **

"Glad we see eye-to-eye so far. Here's the rest of it. Since I am relieving you of the burden of caring for your sister, you have to do something for me in return. Seems fair don't it? Plus, you might get a little added bonus every now and then if you do a good job."

Rosco looked up into Boss's eyes, paying full attention now.

_Bingo_, Boss thought to himself. That was what he wanted. Undivided attention.

"And it won't cost you a dime. You just have to do some jobs for me, get your usual paycheck as a sheriff, and then the added bonus. And it'll be all yours for the takin'."

* * *

**Balladeer:** **The marriage of Lulu Coltrane and J.D. Hogg was an enormous event. Everybody in town showed up to see the county commissioner gettin' married to the heiress of the Coltrane fortune. It seemed like a match in heaven. Lulu was beaming in her wedding gown and Boss was looking flashy in his (gasp!) black tuxedo. Everybody seemed to be in good spirits that day.**

**Things weren't so bright after the couple returned from the honeymoon. No, the happy twosome were doing fine. I was referring to everybody else's situations not looking so bright.**

Boss had called Rosco, now his brother-in-law, into his office early that morning. The half-asleep sheriff stood at somewhat attention by Boss's desk until he was asked to sit down. Boss thumped the ashes from the end of his cigar into his ashtray.

"Rosco, you remember that little conversation we had back in the Boar's Nest about two months ago?"

"Sure, Boss, couldn't forget it. I was sure upset then."

"I know you were, and I helped to fix that by marryin' your sister, didn't I _brother-in-law?_"

"Yep, sure did."

Boss grinned to himself, glad he had gotten that put back into Rosco's brain. He took a puff of his cigar and let the smoke come drifting out his mouth. "You remember what I said about your end of the bargain?"

"Oh, well, Boss—you never really explained that too well to me."

_And boy am I fixin' to explain it_, Boss thought with a smug look on his face. He put his elbows on the desk and fixated in hands in a prayer like position, only of course he wasn't praying. "Rosco, I really don't know how to tell ya but I suppose I shouldn't leave out any details. You remember you lost your pension, of course, seein' how that started everything."

Rosco's eyes drifted to the floor, remembering how awful he had felt when he received the news.

"Well, wouldn't you like to know who's responsible for that terrible loss?"

The sheriff looked back up at Boss. "The federal government?"

"NO!" Boss shouted, slapping a hand against his desk and making a loud WHAPPING noise that hurt Rosco's ears. "It was the _people of Hazzard_! They voted to cut pensions from the budget, in order to help the finances of the town and to help support their own puny selves."

Rosco gave Boss a blank look. "But, Boss—I thought—but I thought they were my friends?"

"You _thought_ wrong!" Boss exclaimed, getting up now to pace back in forth in front of the befuddled sheriff, like a tiger paces in a cage waiting to pounce on the best piece of meat. "Don't you get it, Rosco? You weren't a friend to these people! They thought you were a joke! What kind of sheriff doesn't write up parking tickets? You didn't even write up anybody going over ten miles an hour! Didn't you know that you can have an accident with someone even going _five_ miles over? These people thought you completely inept of your job and decided you weren't worth wasting money on for your pension, so they just cut you out!"

The words stung Rosco like he'd just stuck his hand in a beehive. The people of Hazzard? His _friends_? Or he thought they were his friends—apparently not. Rosco shook his head.

"Are you positive, Boss? It ain't no mistake?"

"No mistake!" Boss roared. "You were cheated on by the very people you had swore to protect—_had_ protected for over twenty years!"

Rosco's eyes drifted back to the floor, tears welling up in his eyes at the thought that his friends and neighbors had even thought to do something like that. Boss decided to switch off from his "dictator persona" and turned into "best friend who'll always be there for ya persona".

"Rosco," he said, softly patting the man's back. "I know it's hard for ya to think that you'd been cheated by your fellow Hazzard citizens, but it's true. I tried to stop them from carrying the motion, but it was a majority-rules kinda thing."

**Balladeer: If you believe that garbage he just said, you might as well believe that pigs can fly and that Dorothy really _did_ go over the rainbow.**

A tear slid down Rosco's face. "But—I was a good cop. I didn't do anything I wasn't supposed to—I was a good role model—good cop . . . "

"I know you were, Rosco," Boss agreed with him, still patting his back. "But sometimes bein' good doesn't cut it. People don't appreciate a good person when they meet one."

He sat in front of him and took him by the shoulders. "But all's not lost. This is part of the plan. Them folks out there, they made a fool out of you." He pointed towards the open window with the people flooding the sidewalks, Rosco following his finger to look out. "Why not make fools out of them?"

Rosco turned his head back at Boss. "You mean—get revenge?"

"Exactly!" Boss exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. "_Revenge_. That's the only way to get those people to understand that they made a huge mistake by messin' with their sheriff like that."

"But—but how do I do that? I'm not very good at stuff like this."

"That's all right, you don't have to! _I_ will do the thinkin' for you! _I_ will come up with the plans to snooker these people like they snookered _you_! All you have to do is listen to everything I tell ya, and everything will be fine! And like I said two months ago at the Boar's Nest, I'll even give ya added bonuses for doin' a good job!"

Rosco gave him his classic ear-to-ear smile that he was so well known for.

"Golly, Boss, you're a real pal! Uh, just one question?"

"And what might that be?" Boss smiled, knowing that his plan had gone full-scale—he'd married the Coltrane fortune heiress, talked her sheriff brother into working alongside him so that he couldn't get caught for illegal activities (simply by cancelling his pension, the rest followed like dominoes), and the whole time Rosco simply thought that Boss was doing this stuff just to get him out of a money jam!

"Why you doin' all this for me? I didn't even think ya liked me."

Boss patted Rosco's shoulder. "Of course I like you, Rosco. That's why I'm doin' this for ya. Besides, what are family for?"

"Yeah . . . family . . ."


End file.
